The Ivy League is a product of Northeastern culture and history.
The eight member schools predominantly draw from that Northeastern base, but their volleyball programs have almost no foundation in the area.
There are 118 Ivy League women's volleyball players. An astounding 47.5% of them are from California.
Perhaps the most stunning example of this West Coast phenomenon is Columbia's squad. Not a single player on their eleven person roster resides east of the Pacific time zone.
Columbia's roster features eight Californians, and one player each from Oregon, Washington and Hawaii.
Columbia coach Monica Holmes explains that the West Coast is simply rife with talent and easiest to recruit from.
"The largest pool [is] on the West Coast and we had to go where the largest pool is located," Holmes said. "We recruited on a national level ... it just seemed to work out that our players are from the West Coast."
Penn coach Kerry Carr explained that there are four hotbeds of volleyball in the United States -- California, Florida, Texas and the Midwest.
Carr hits the nail right on the head. The four states producing the most Division I volleyball recruits are California (649), Texas (461), Illinois (360) and Ohio (212).
"Our last four recruiting classes have reflected that," Carr said.
The current Penn roster features six Californians, three from Michigan, and one from each of Georgia, Alabama, Pennsylvania and Texas.
The dearth of East Coast talent makes recruiting simultaneously easier and more challenging. It can allow coaches to focus on certain geographic regions while recruiting, but it also means that they have to search for players who are willing to travel far from home.
Holmes believes life is easier only having to scour the talent-rich West Coast.
While an Ivy League education is highly attractive to many players and parents, Carr believes the limited number of roster spots in California helps her recruiting effort.
In fact, she believes recruiting for Penn in California is pretty easy.
"With all the private schools out there, Penn is just a really hot school right now in California," Carr said. "I get a lot of interest from California kids. Parents are valuing the idea of a traditional East Coast education."
While the East Coast may lack volleyball talent now, that problem may diminish in coming years. The Northeast, from Washington to Maine, has only produced 376 current Division I players, slightly more than the state of Illinois alone.
However, the country as a whole -- including the East Coast -- is developing better volleyball programs. For example, some grass-roots programs are being started here in Philadelphia, in schools such as West Catholic.
Colorado, New York, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan and Florida each have over 100 recruits in Division I ranks. Furthermore, a study of volleyball recruiting shows that Nebraska is proportionally the top talent producer at 33.3 per million state residents.
Yet this study too shows the scarcity of East Coast players. In the eleven states between Maryland and Maine, a meager 5.1 out of every million people play Division I volleyball. In order for this situation to be improved, high school volleyball players need to start playing year round to compete with the national talent.
However, Carr finds the level of volleyball to be improving across the country.
"Ten years ago it would have been a lot more skewed than that. There was only one place to find volleyball at that point," Carr said. "It's so much better now."
